, which commands the town, was taken from Mr. Henry
Roche, J.P. All food and arms and vehicles throughout the town were
commandeered. But there was no looting, a considerable body of young men
having been formed into a species of Republican police--an organization
which would have saved the Dublin rising half its horrors.

The ladies of the "Cumann na Ban" next turned the top story of the
Athenaeum into an improvised hospital, and here were brought the wounded
in the attack on the constabulary barracks, which lasted all Thursday
and part of Friday.

Friday was spent in preparation and expectation--the news of the
collapse of the revolt in Dublin not having yet reached them--and on
Saturday a motor expedition to Ferns resulted in the capture of the post
office and barracks.

As food had now become scarce, shops were only allowed to sell limited
quantities, and as the situation was becoming dangerous, with the
expected advent of the military, pickets were placed at street corners,
and these insisted on the civilian population keeping within doors.

Another strange, though by no means uncommon, sight was whole rows of
Volunteers going up to the Cathedral for confession, and on the Sunday
attending Mass.

The clergy, while not refusing them the consolations of religion,
however, in no way encouraged them in their illusion of success, for on
the Sunday morning a party of citizens from Arklow brought a priest
under cover of the white flag to announce to the rebels the collapse of
the rising in Dublin.

A deputation of the town was then sent to Wexford to interview the
military there, who confirmed the news; but, as elsewhere, even this did
not satisfy them, and they refused to surrender the town of Enniscorthy
until their leaders had seen Dublin's disaster with their own eyes.

Even then the "commanders" wanted to hold out, and, as the _Daily
Sketch_ correspondent pointed out, it was only when the chief citizens
themselves made the petition that the Volunteers at last consented.

Indeed, it would have been hard to conceive how they could logically
have insisted on defending the town, which refused to acknowledge them;
and the rebels, in justice be it said of them, were nothing if not
logical--even if only the logic of madmen. If Ireland refused to look
upon them as saviours, then they were not going to play the part of
tyrants; and it seems to me that if the civil authorities of Dublin had
taken up this stand on the